Amarkantak is a small town in Madhya Pradesh where two of India's great rivers begin. The Narmada is the one I go for. You have to climb through a small temple complex to reach the pond the river supposedly emerges from. The pond is not dramatic. The water does not gush. There is no moment where the river announces itself. It just is, somehow, beginning, and then it is flowing, and then eventually, much later, it is a river that has carved a valley.
I have been going to Amarkantak for six years now, twice a year on average. I go because the place is a working lesson on something I keep needing to relearn, and the lesson will not stay learned unless I am physically there. I want to try to name the lesson, though I am going to fail to name it well, because it is the kind of lesson that is more easily sat with than said.
The quietness is the point
The Narmada's source does not perform. It has no interest in whether you are impressed. It has been doing this, in roughly the same way, for longer than the idea of India has existed, and it will continue to do so regardless of who is paying attention. This is, among other things, a commentary on ambition, which I find useful to visit in person once or twice a year.
Most careers, including mine, have quiet periods that feel, from the inside, like failures. You are working. You are not being seen. The work is not paying off yet. This is almost always the time when something is actually being built. The feedback loop between effort and recognition is slow. It runs on a different clock than the one your anxiety runs on. Amarkantak is useful because it is a physical demonstration of something large beginning quietly and being, in no particular hurry, about to become itself.
The long arc
The Narmada flows for about 1,300 kilometers after it leaves Amarkantak. It supports a civilization along its banks. Entire towns depend on it. An enormous body of literature has been written about it. The river does not, at its source, advertise any of this. The future of the river is not visible in the pond.
This is, I think, the most important thing Amarkantak teaches me. The consequences of a life are not visible in any given moment of that life. The decisions I am making today will, if they are going to matter, matter later, and by the time they matter it will not be obvious which decisions caused what. The only thing to do about this is the thing the river does. Keep going. Stay coherent. Trust the downstream.
Why I keep going back
The honest answer is that I get depleted. The xAI work is demanding in a specific way. The studio work is demanding in a different specific way. The writing, when I am doing it, is demanding in a third. Between them, my capacity for a kind of quiet, self-directed attention drains faster than I refill it in the normal course of city life.
Amarkantak refills it. I do not do anything useful there. I walk to the pond. I sit. I drink tea that is too sweet. I read, a little, but mostly I sit and watch the water not perform. I come back to Mumbai or Kolkata with my capacity for attention somewhat restored, and I can work again for another five or six months before I need to go back.
This is, I realize, not a scalable practice. It requires going somewhere specific. It costs time and money. It inconveniences the people who need me when I am not reachable. I have no defense for this except to say that the work I do afterward, for some months, is measurably better than the work I do when I have not been. If that is a luxury, it is one I have decided I need.
If you ever pass through, say hello. The town is small. You will find me.